The number of CEO resignations at U.S. companies hit a record high this year

This year, CEOs have retired, been ousted, poached, and retreated.

According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, publicly traded U.S. companies have announced 327 chief executive changes through November of this year.

That’s more than in any year since at least 2010, when the company first started tracking sales. This is also an 8.6% increase compared to the previous year.

The turnover rate also includes CEOs of American companies that have long dominated the industry. boeing, nike and starbucks. The pace of change is such that customers, investors, hedge funds and boards of these companies are growing impatient with weak sales and strategic missteps in a strong economy, just as consumers are showing signs of spending. It shows that.

During the pandemic, companies suddenly faced lockdowns, remote work, supply chain challenges and shortages, and CEO turnover slowed, although it wasn’t a perfect survival. Then it faced rising borrowing costs, inflation, labor shortages, changing consumer preferences, and other challenges.

The number of substitutes in 2021 was the lowest in the past 14 years at 197.

“The cost of capital and the speed of change are accelerating revenue,” said Clark Murphy, managing director and former chief executive officer of leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

Murphy said poor performance is more noticeable in a strong market.

“When the S&P stock price was over 20%, [500] ‘s return for a second consecutive year has focused attention on companies that are significantly underperforming, and boards are moving more quickly than they were five to seven years ago,” Murphy said.

Consumer-focused companies are more susceptible to changing tastes and trends, so they typically have higher turnover rates than industries such as oil and gas and utilities, which tend to have long-tenured CEOs within the company. is.

The recent surge in sales comes despite a decline in the number of listed companies.

Here are some of the major changes to U.S. CEOs so far this year:

The company fired Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger earlier this month, nearly four years after he was appointed to turn the chipmaker around and make it more competitive with rivals.

intelStock prices and market share collapsed as artificial intelligence wave boosted chipmakers Nvidia Meanwhile, Intel was struggling to break into this business.

A successor has not yet been decided.

The aerospace giant announced the departure of former CEO Dave Calhoun in March as part of a broader management shakeup. The incident occurred nearly three months after an unsecured door plug was blown mid-air from a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9 operated by the airline. alaska airlinesafter years of problems across its defense and civil aerospace businesses, the company has relapsed into a safety crisis that has frustrated leaders of some of the airline’s biggest customers.

Calhoun himself was appointed in late 2019 to replace former CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who was fired in the wake of two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Mr. Calhoun was replaced in August by Kelly Ortberg, a 30-year aerospace veteran and former CEO of Rockwell Collins, but Boeing has decided to stabilize the company. In order to do so, he was recruited from retirement in Florida.

Mr. Ortberg announced thousands of layoffs and other cost cuts to conserve cash as Boeing works to stabilize production amid a labor strike that ended last month.

As sales in its largest market shrink, starbucks poached Chipotle Mexican Grill Star CEO Brian Nicol will replace Laxman Narasimhan and turn around the coffee chain’s fortunes. After Nicol’s appointment was announced in August, the company’s stock price soared nearly 25%.

Within his first 100 days in office, he announced plans to bring the company “back to Starbucks” and refocus on what attracted customers to the coffee chain in the first place. Early stages of the strategy include making coffee shops more welcoming, cutting down on long menus and speeding up service.

Meanwhile, Chipotle in November appointed insider and industry veteran Scott Boatright to the Mexican food chain’s leadership team.

In September, the company replaced CEO John Donahoe with Elliott Hill, a Nike veteran who joined the company as an intern in the 1980s.

Since taking over, Mr. Donahue has helped Nike’s sales grow from $39.1 billion in fiscal 2019 to $51.4 billion in fiscal 2024, but growth has been slowed by the move away from wholesale partners such as Foot Locker and Foot Locker. eventually stalled. macyand lost sight of innovation.

The home fitness equipment company, a darling of the pandemic, has been struggling since back-to-office mandates began.

Peloton hired former Spotify and Netflix executive Barry McCarthy to replace founder John Foley in 2022, but he resigned in May after the company announced further restructuring.

In October, Peloton announced Peter Stern. ford with executives apple Co-founder and third CEO of Fitness+. Stern has a history of growing subscription-based services, and Wall Street expects him to lead Peloton to profitability by cutting costs and focusing on high-margin subscription revenue. There is.

kohls Tom Kingsbury, CEO of the off-mall department store, will retire on January 15, and will be replaced by Ashley Buchanan of craft mecca Michaels, the company announced.

Kohl’s’ same-store sales, a key metric for retailers, have declined in each of the past 11 quarters, and its stock price has also fallen.

The weight loss company formerly known as Weight Watchers announced in September that CEO Sima Sistani would resign with immediate effect.

WW International has been struggling, with its stock price down more than 80% this year. During Sistani’s tenure, the company has exhausted its pivot to include a platform that connects customers with popular weight-loss drugs.

—CNBC’s Gabriel Fonrouge and Amelia Lucas contributed to this report.